宗族在传统意义上同时具有强结构与强功能，体现在规范结构、互助合作和共同防御三个方面。但工业化村庄或经济发达地区的宗族在经历急剧的经济分化后容易形成一种“外强-中干”的动态结构，即强结构、强规范的宗族内部存在诸多破碎化的个人关系，导致结构与功能的背离。一方面这种“中干”是由“外强”意外性导致的，宗族性越强反而越容易加强破碎化的个体间关系；但另一方面又因为宗族维系的存在，彻底的分裂或原子化得以避免。 这种宗族的“外强-中干”是由不对等格局导致的，后者由不对等的人情往来、生活面向、意义世界与彼此期待四个维度组成。与传统社会的均质互惠不同，经济分化后数额巨大的“好心事”不再轻而易举，且富人向穷人要的人情能够还、穷人向富人要的就不一定能还了。建立在经济不对称上，富人的生活面向在村庄之外，穷人仍然在内，也不再共享一个意义世界，但观念的力量使后者仍然保持对前者的期待，终于在一次次索取中使期待不再的前者产生对对方“自私化”的感觉以及抵触的行动，最终使客观的社会联结产生质变。 差序格局作为一个分析社会结构的功能性概念，往往隐含相对对等的前提，即一定场域内所有个体的差序格局都互为同一圈层。但是在经济分化衍生的不对等格局下，按照传统血缘上是第一圈的兄弟，在生活情感和经济意义的重要性上却可能不再那么密切，而是让位于血缘上疏远但生意上密切的亲戚。由此，人与人之间边界感的认知也呈现不同程度的差异，最后凝固为四种类型。因为理念之间对边界厘定的不同，社会关联由此经过感性上的误判而产生结构性的断裂。 尽管包含着权力冲突的因素，现代性对社会联结的切割很大程度上是无意识性的。所谓“无意识”性，是指当不同理念类型的人发生互动，由于各自划定的圈层从性质到范围都并不一致，彼此在对方差序格局的相对位置也不尽相同，在缺乏反思性监控情况下，常常受观念的驱使，相互都认为对方的要求越界了、“过分了”，从而也就造成了争吵以及随后社会关联的破坏。

Clans have strong structures and strong functions in the traditional sense, which are embodied in three aspects: normative structure, mutual cooperation and common defense. But in industrialized villages or economically developed areas where experienced rapid economic differentiation, they tend to form a dynamic structure of “external strength-inner weakness”, which means, there are many broken personal relationships inside the clan of strong structures and strong norms, therefore it leads to the deviation of structure and function, On the one hand, this kind of “inner weakness” is caused by the accidentality of "external strength". The stronger the clan, the more fragmentation of the inter-individual relationship will be generated; on the other hand, because of the existence of the clan lineage, the totally division or atomization have been avoided. The “external strength-inner weakness” of the clan is caused by the unequal pattern, which consists of four levels: unequal Renqing exchange, life orientation, meaning world and mutual expectation. Different from the homogeneity and reciprocity of traditional society, the “good things” that need huge capital are no longer easy after economic differentiation, and the wealthy people have the ability to return to the poor however the poor may not be so. Based on the economic asymmetry, the lives of the rich are open to what outside the village, the poor are still there at the same time, therefore they no longer share the same world of meaning anymore, but the power of old beliefs keeps the latter still expecting the former, and finally the former have a feeling of "selfishness" and resistance to the other party after being asked for over and over again, and ultimately the objective social connection changed qualitatively. As a functional concept for analyzing social structure, “Chaxu geju” often implies the premise of relative reciprocity, that is, the difference pattern of all individuals in a certain field is the same circle. However, under the unequal pattern derived from economic differentiation, the brothers in the first lap may not be so close in the life emotions and economic significance, and alienate in the blood but close in business. As a result, the perception of the sense of border between people and people also has different degrees, and solidified into four types. Because of the difference in the definition of boundaries between people’s conception, social associations are structurally broken by perceptual misjudgment. Despite the factors of power conflict, the cutting of social connections by modernity is largely unconscious. "Unconscious" means that when people who have different types of conceptions interact, because the layers they define are inconsistent from nature to scope, the relative positions of each other's Chaxu geju are not the same, they are often driven by the ideas in the absence of reflective, and each other thinks that the other one’s requirements are out of bounds and “excessive”, which in turn causes quarrels and subsequent destruction of social connections.